Rialto’s Gabriel Lujano misses the throw to first as San Gorgonio’s Jason Wright crosses the bag during the County Clash at San Manuel Stadium in San Bernardino, CA, Saturday, April 2, 2016. (Photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher/The Sun)

SAN BERNARDINO >> San Gorgonio baseball coach Bill Eatinger has called his team’s success so far this season a little bit of “smoke and mirrors.”

The Spartans used a little bit more of that magic Saturday afternoon as they defeated Rialto 8-0 in the second game of the County Clash at San Manuel Stadium.

San Gorgonio (12-2 overall, 3-0 in the San Andreas League) scored just two earned runs while taking advantage of four Rialto errors to run away with the victory.

“If Rialto plays catch, we’re probably still playing,” Eatinger said of the game, which took just 1 hour and 35 minutes. “We don’t hit well. We’ve won games all year on pitching and defense, and we proved it again today.”

The Knights (7-6, 1-2) led off the game by getting their first two runners on base against pitcher Chris Hardin. But a diving stop by third baseman Matt Negrete led to a forceout to shut down the rally.

In the bottom half of the first inning, Jason Wright worked back from an 0-2 count to get a leadoff single on a 3-2 pitch from Abel Madueno. Dillon Konoho was hit by a pitch while trying to bunt Wright over. Then with two outs, Roycer Aguilar hit a grounder to third, where Manuel Perez had trouble handling the ball, allowing San G to load the bases.

With Hardin at the plate, Konoho broke for third base, drawing the attention of catcher Oscar Ponce, who ran him back toward second base. Ponce threw to shortstop Victor Vodnik, who had the ball bounce off the heel of his glove into center field, allowing Wright to score.

Hardin worked a walk to re-load the bases, and Bryan Delgado was hit in the back by a pitch from Madueno, scoring Konoho and giving the Spartans a 2-0 lead after an inning.

For Eatinger, getting the early lead on the trick play helped get his team going early.

“When you’re struggling to score runs, you’re just hoping for a rundown and a mistake, and it happened,” he said. “We’ve run it before, and it’s cost us some runs in the past, but when you’re desperate to score, you pull a rabbit out of your hat.”

The early mistakes took the Knights out of the game.

“(The) San Manuel (scorekeeper) was actually generous, we had more than four errors,” said Rialto coach Lloyd Sheppard. “Like I told my guys, when out of the eight runs, two of them are earned, we’re not going to win games that way. That’s just the bottom line.”

Meanwhile, Hardin (5-0) kept the Knights off balance at the plate, allowing only three hits in six innings of work without giving up an earned run, according to Eatinger.

“I think he was deceptive,” Sheppard said of Hardin. “He had a fastball every once in a while, but he continued to rely on his off-speed stuff. And I think the off-speed stuff is what did us in. Our guys didn’t make the adjustment to sit on the off-speed stuff.”

San Gorgonio broke the game open in the fifth, sending 11 men to the plate, getting four hits and taking advantage of two more Rialto errors, a passed ball and a wild pitch.

With only one senior on the roster, the Spartans have worked to keep their game simple, and it worked out again, as they kept pace in the San Andreas League race.

“We’re tremendously young,” Eatinger said. “Our youth has been exposed a few times. But for the most part, we pitch and play catch, and if you do that you’re going to be in every single game. You don’t have to hit a ton to win, just do enough. And that’s what we’ve done for the most part this year.”

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